Theories of Personality: Abraham Maslow

Background

• 1908-1970
• Forerunner of positive psychology
• Radically different view of human nature
• Rejected ideas of Freud and Skinner

Harry Harlow’s Lab

• Maslow worked in Harlow’s laboratory as a student at the University of Wisconsin
• Harlow famous for the monkey studies using wire and cloth mothers
• Maslow didn’t see his future in experimental psychology

Maslow at Brandeis

• Maslow began teaching in NYC area
• Met many leading neo-Freudians, including Alfred Adler and Erich Fromm
• In 1951, Maslow became the chairman of the psychology department at Brandeis University
• Met Gestalt Psychologist Kurt Goldstein who introduced him to the idea of self-actualization
  • Goldstein first trained as a neurologist and as an early advocate of holistic medicine
  • Have to deal with the whole organism

Maslow’s Assumptions

• Human nature is basically good, not evil
• Normal human development involves the actualization of this inherent goodness
• Central Human Motive: self-actualization

Guiding Principles

1. Needs arranged according to potency and strength. Lower needs stronger and more urgently felt.
2. Lower needs appear earlier in development.
   • Babies concerned with biological, toddlers with safety, seniors more likely to be self-actualized
3. Needs are filled sequentially, lowest to highest
   • Maslow did not believe that you had to completely satisfy each level before moving to a higher one
   • Ex. work for safety when 60% of physiological needs are met.

Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

1. Physiological or Survival Needs
   • Approximately 85% of the population satisfies this need
   • Most needs have to do with survival physically and psychologically
   • Food and water
   • Rest and sleep
   • Exercise and health
2. Safety Needs
   • Approximately 75% of the population satisfies this need
   • An individual cannot satisfy any level unless needs below are satisfied
   • Physical security
   • Dependence
   • Stability, order, structure
   • Freedom from fear
3. Social Needs
   • Approximately 50% of the population satisfies this need
   • Love and affection
   • Belonging (to a family or group)
   • Friendship
   • Spending time with other people
4. Esteem Needs
   • Approximately 40% of the population satisfies this need
   • Self-Esteem: achievement, confidence, mastery, strength
   • Esteem from Others: recognition, appreciation, attention, status and reputation
5. Self-Actualization Needs
   • Approximately 10% of the population satisfies this need
   • Maslow emphasizes need for self-actualization is a healthy individual’s prime motivation
   • Self-Actualization: actualizing one’s potential becoming all one is capable of becoming
   • Living up to your potential
   • Accepting your strengths and limitations
   • Accepting other people for whom and what they are
   • Being spontaneous
   • Acting creatively (even if not artistic)
   • Acting independently (of other’s opinion)

\n 8 Ways to Self-Actualize

• Experience things fully, vividly, selflessly. Throw yourself into the experience; concentrate on it fully; let it totally absorb you.
• Life is an ongoing process of choosing between safety (out of fear) and risk (for the sake of growth: make the growth choice a dozen times a day).
• Let the self emerge. Try to shut out external clues as to what you should think, feel, say, and let your experience enable you to say what you truly feel.
• When in doubt, be honest. If you look into yourself and are honest, you will also take responsibility; taking responsibility is self-actualizing.
• Listen to your own tastes. Be prepared to be unpopular.
• Use your intelligence. Work to do the things you want to do, whether that means to do, whether that means finger exercises at a keyboard, memorizing every bone, muscle, and hormone in the human body, or learning to finish wood so it looks and feels like silk.
• Make peak experience more likely: to get rid of illusions and false notions; learn what you are good at and what your potentialities are not.
• Find out who you are, what you like and don’t like, what is good and what is bad for you, where you are going, what your mission is. Opening yourself up in this way means identifying defenses – and then finding the courage to give them up.

Cycle of D-Motives

• Deficit needs
• Deprivation leads to drive to satisfy need
• Achieve homeostasis
• Not just biological needs
• Essential for survival
• Even instinctual

Being Motives

• Once D-needs are fulfilled, being needs emerge
• Growth motivation
• Not governed by homeostasis
• Becomes stronger as you fulfill them
• Strive now to be all that you can be
• Self-actualizers

Portrait of Self-Actualizers

• Small group according to Maslow
• 1-2% of the population
• Generally 60+ years old
• Reality and problem centered
• Enjoy solitude and have deep personal relationships with a few close friends
• Autonomous, resisted enculturation
• Acceptance of self and others
• Strong ethics, spiritual, seldom religious
• Prefer spontaneity and simplicity
• Unhostile sense of humor

Peak Experiences

• Moments of transcendence
• To climb above culture
• Perceptual experiences, largely passive
• Spiritual realm for some but necessarily religious people may be reluctant to report
• Unlike flow where you have superior functioning, self-absorbed

Peak Experiences Described

• Davis (1991) interviewed 250 people
• 80% reported having a peak experience
• Might share contents with close friend
• Experience special, intimate, and personal
• Not easy to describe in words
• Transcend normal language

Failure to Actualize

• Many fail to actualize because:

1. Growth tendency is weaker than deficiency motives. Hard to transcend hunger.
2. Normal culture downplays the importance of the inner life (voice). Just trying to gain control of our impulses
3. Growth requires taking risks than many are unwilling to do
   • Ex. international education. Study in another culture

Jonah Complex

• Maslow used biblical story of Jonah to illustrate those unwilling to take risks
• Jonah tried to run away from risk
• Only after spending some time in the whale did he agree to complete his mission
• Maslow called his reluctance the Jonah Complex

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